The Defense That Went to Fat Camp

Faced With a Brutal Schedule, No. 1 LSU Decided to Skinny Up its D; Fear and Plyometrics

By

Scott Cacciola

October 7, 2011

Baton Rouge, La.

LSU has earned the country's No. 1 ranking in college football largely through the strength of its defense, which has treated opponents like piñatas this season, holding them to a sniveling two yards per rushing attempt. As LSU puts its unbeaten record on the line against No. 17 Florida this weekend, this unit is inviting comparisons to some of the all-time greats.

But if you have any preconceptions about how a great Southeastern Conference defense gets made, you might want to set them aside. For one thing, this team's starting linemen and linebackers are rather small by the overfed standards of the SEC—they're about 20 pounds lighter, on average, than their equivalents at Alabama. But what really makes this defense unusual is the force that drove its development. It was built on fear—the fear of Oregon.

In September 2010, after LSU agreed to open the 2011 season against the Ducks, head coach Les Miles began to scheme—and sweat. Renowned for its up-tempo, spread-the-field offense and its flair for innovation, Oregon was a game-planning nightmare. (The only team to beat the Ducks last year was Auburn, which had six weeks to plot.) "You can't prepare for an uptempo style of play in one week," former Oregon coach Mike Bellotti said. "You can't do it in two weeks. It takes six weeks, minimum. If you can spend nine months on it, even better."

Miles and his staff recognized that losing to a PlayStation offense from the Pac-12 would be a tricky way to launch a season. But unlike many teams that have struggled to prepare for Oregon, LSU had a head start.

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When LSU's defensive coordinator, John Chavis, arrived in 2009, he knew all about the Oregon menace. Defenses were being exposed by spread-type offenses that sprayed the ball to shifty playmakers in open spaces. Missed tackles were becoming the norm. Chavis said he knew he needed to recruit with care—and foresight. "The college game has gotten to be a speed game," he said. "If you don't have athletes who can run, you're in trouble."

When the Ducks showed up to play the Tigers on Sept. 3 at Cowboys Stadium, they faced a precocious defense. Two of LSU's top ends and its two starting tackles are sophomores. One of those ends, Barkevious Mingo, is a case study for the unusual thinking that went into this unit: At West Monroe (La.) High School, Mingo was a star sprinter capable of covering 400 meters in 48 seconds. He also was 6 feet 4, thin as a post, and hadn't played football until his junior year when the coach, Don Shows, convinced him to try out. "Big don't always mean good," Shows said. "We just lined him up and told him to get the guy who's got the ball. Nobody could block him."

The Mingo model was exactly what LSU's Chavis wanted: a defensive end who not only could pursue the quarterback but could also track quick backs and receivers when necessary. Mingo, who arrived on campus at 195 pounds, has since bulked to a listed 240.

Oregon's greatest weapon is relentlessness. The Ducks typically try to run a play every 18 to 22 seconds, a tempo that, according to Bellotti, is meant to "make those big defenders up front play with sloppy technique, make it so they can't focus and can't breathe." The damage often is most apparent late in games when defensive linemen—particularly the big tackles—are a step slower and more vulnerable to rushes up the middle.

LSU's four sophomore linemen—the ends Mingo and Sam Montgomery and defensive tackles Bennie Logan and Michael Brockers—were all red-shirted in 2009. This gave Tommy Moffitt, LSU's strength and conditioning coach, the chance—as he put it—to "experiment" with them.

Moffitt stressed plyometric training. He had them flip tires and push sleds, varying the resistance based on what he called the coefficient of friction. He charted how much each player moved at every practice, down to the yard. He went online and searched for new exercises, he said, until his "eyeballs bled."

One of Moffitt's favorite metrics is relative strength—a measure of how much work a player can do per pound of body weight. Defensive backs, he said, should score in the upper fives, defensive ends in the low fives and defensive tackles in the mid fours. If a player has a too-small number, Moffitt said, it's a sign that his "non-functional" mass is slowing him down.

Moffitt believes that if a football player can lose 10 pounds while improving his relative strength, he'll be more efficient in games. "We're not going to roll a bunch of skinny minis out there on the field; that's not our goal," he said. "But we want every ounce of weight to be force-generating."

Brockers, the tackle, said it took some convincing for him to buy in. "I was afraid that I wouldn't have the strength or size" to take on 320-pound offensive linemen, he said. But after trimming down from 315 pounds to 305, he said he feels just as strong as he did last season—in addition to having more speed and stamina.

To simulate the rapid pace at which Oregon snaps the ball, Miles came up with a novel idea at spring practice: He had the defense work against two offenses. As soon as one offense finished running a play, a fresh new one trotted out. Miles liked it so much he carried it over to the preseason. "I want you to imagine practicing against a hurry-up Oregon offense in the middle of the summer," Montgomery said, "in Louisiana."

When the Ducks met LSU, they faced a fitter, faster and, in some instances, smaller defense than they'd seen on tape. It was, in some ways, a perfect doppelganger of their offense. After taking down the Ducks 40-27, LSU has since run its record to 5-0 and ranks No. 5 in the country in total defense in terms of yards allowed per play (3.8), while playing four ranked opponents. Those whippet-strong linemen—Mingo, Montgomery and Logan—lead the team with 4.5 tackles for loss and two sacks apiece. And 5-foot-9 cornerback Tyrann Mathieu leads the team with four forced fumbles and 25 solo tackles. (It's worth noting that Oregon has averaged 60.3 points in three wins since playing LSU.)

If there's likely to be a reckoning for the skinnied-up Tigers defense, it might come on Nov. 5 when they head to Tuscaloosa to play Alabama. The Crimson Tide runs a conventional, pro-style offense from behind a jumbo-size line that averages 6 feet 4, 313 pounds. Those blockers, paired with 224-pound running back Trent Richardson, can make any defense look small.

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